18 THE BIG ISSUE 23 MAY – 5 JUNE 2014
year after Avengers: Age of Ultron next
year. Sony is already working on spin-
offs from the Spider-Man franchise; Fox
is about to start filming a reboot of The
Fantastic Four and another X-Men film
(titled X-Men: Apocalypse, set in the
1980s) is already on the drawing board.
And that’s just the forthcoming
movies based on Marvel characters. DC
already has Batman vs Superman and
a Justice League movie in the pipeline.
If you’re sick of costumed adventurers,
you might want to stay away from
cinemas for the next few years. Calling
a superhero movie Days of Future Past
seems more appropriate all the time...
» Anthony Morris is The Big Issue’s DVD
editor. He knows far too much about
things like superheroes. X-Men: Days of
Future Past is out now.
It might seem like Marvel is flooding
the market, but it’s not its fault: in the
1980s and 1990s it sold the rights to
many of its characters to rival studios.
Sony grabbed the rights to Spider-Man
and Ghost Rider; Fox had Daredevil,
the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.
Then Marvel started making its own
movies with the characters it still had,
beginning in 2008 with Iron Man.
Disney, seeing the profits to be made,
bought Marvel outright in 2009. Now, if
other studios don’t make movies using
the characters to which they have rights,
the rights revert to Marvel/Disney. It’s
a case of use it or lose it, and with ideas
being in short supply in Hollywood
they’re using the characters for all they’re
worth. Disney is committed to putting
out two Marvel movies every year, with
talk of ramping up production to three a
making the film noticed), it also killed
off a bunch of the cast. Professor X and
Jean Grey were now dead, and Magneto
had lost his powers. In a better movie
these would have been minor issues for
a follow-up to tackle, but The Last Stand
was not an act anyone wanted to follow.
The solution? A series of ‘X-Men:
Origin’ movies that would provide
backstory for the more popular
characters. But the first attempt – the
clumsily titled X-Men Origin: Wolverine
– turned out to be kind of average,
shoe-horning in a bunch of new mutants
(Gambit, Deadpool) and younger versions
of established characters. It didn’t really
work. Proposed spin-offs for Magneto
and Deadpool were quickly put on hold,
and only the fact that another prequel
(X-Men: First Class) was already in
development kept it alive.
In yet another last-minute escape for
the much-loved mutants, First Class
(directed by Vaughn, his earlier issues
settled) turned out to be both creatively
and commercially successful. The new
cast and early 1960s setting, combined
with some interesting character twists
–
as younger men, Professor X (James
McAvoy) was a swinging womaniser,
while Magneto (Michael Fassbender)
was a Nazi hunter – breathed life into
the franchise.
In fact, it breathed in enough new life
for Fox studios to finally decide it was
safe to revive the characters last seen
in Last Stand. With Singer returning to
direct, X-Men: Days of Future Past is a
time-travel tale where the old Magneto
and Professor X (still McKellen and
Stewart) send Wolverine (still Jackman,
in his sixth outing as the character) back
in time to meet their younger selves
from First Class, and prevent their scary
and seemingly killer-robot-filled future
from ever happening.
As for our superhero-filled present,
it shows no signs whatsoever of
changing. When the first X-Men movie
was released in 2000, it was the only
superhero movie out that year. Now,
not even halfway through 2014, we’ve
already had Spider-Man and Captain
America films, with another Marvel
movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, due
out in August.
HUGH JACKMAN AS WOLVERINE
MICHAEL FASSBENDER AS MAGNETO